Polls Open in Jordan's Parliamentary Elections

Jordanians started heading to polling stations on Tuesday morning to choose the Kingdom's 18th parliament in elections.

According to the Independent Election commission (IEC) figures, over 4.13 million Jordanians are registered to vote in the polling that will be monitored by 14,000 local observers and some 676 international observers in addition to 1,700 journalists who have registered to cover the elections, state news agency (Petra) reported.

A total of 226 lists consisting of 1,252 candidates are competing to win the 130 seats of the Lower House, 252 of whom are women. The law reduced the Lower House seats from 150 to 130, designating 15 seats for the women’s quota. 

The Kingdom is divided into 23 electoral districts, with five for Amman, four for Irbid and two districts for Zarqa governorate. The other governorates are each represented as an electoral district, including the three Badia constituencies.

The number of ballot boxes stand at 4,883 while the number of ballot centers in all governorates across the Kingdom reaches 1,483. All candidates including Circassians, Chechen and Christian candidates can only stand for election through lists as running individually is not permitted, according to the Elections Law.

Source : QNA